Monday, May 02, 2005

The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away

The precious PowerBook has returned from the clutches of the Apple Repair Department, complete with shiny new hard drive, newly installed operating system, and a battery that is so bent and gnarled that it can no longer fit into the case of the computer.

Now, I am normally a supremely patient and agreeable customer on the telephone. I figure, these poor schmucks have to take so much verbal abuse that the rare agreeable patron will be lavished with flowers and greeted as a liberator. When I was preparing to send them my laptop, I was practically British: "Right, hello there. So I've got this exorbitantly expensive piece of machinery that's utterly failed twice in the four months of its brief sojourn on this planet. Terribly sorry to bother you."

And let's not forget the extraordinary care I lavish on this machine: swaddled in scarves, daily baths, seriously anal retentive dust control. And they send me back a bent-up battery? The fuck?? Now, I have never had to wait for an Apple customer care representative, until today, which leads me to the conclusion that wait times are calculated in direct proportion to the pressure one uses whilst pounding the keys or the sternness in voice used while issuing voice commands. Barking "POWERBOOK" instead of sweetly cooing will set you back an extra 10 minutes so you'll cool down. "POWERBOOK YOU WORTHLESS BASTARDS" will trigger a mandatory 20 minute wait.

Anyway.

If there's anything to dissipate my anger, it's the news that this has now been released on DVD. Netflix, you heard me?